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Archive for February, 2017

I have the privilege to be a Health Education England (HEE) academic fellow this year, taking up my fellowship just as summer was throwing us an extra few weeks of warm weather to take forward into the Autumn. My first weeks were a blur of getting my feet under the table in my new home, the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at Oxford University, meeting new colleagues and setting out my plan for the year ahead. I was then straight off to a week-long intensive course to learn the art of changing people’s behaviours – courtesy of Susan Michie and colleagues at the University College London Centre for Behaviour Change. And what a week it was! Not only was it a great course but it was a great way to kick off my fellowship year, providing lots of inspiration and a ‘to-do list’ as long as my arm to get stuck into when I returned to the office.

Developing a suitable research project and securing research funding for it was one of the aims of my HEE academic fellowship, so I was thrilled when I found out I had been successful in securing an award, from the British Heart Foundation, to fund my proposed research project – investigating ways to help people with high blood pressure reduce their salt intake. Cue a short but wild celebration – short because the funding was contingent on having ethics approval for all elements of the research in place before the award would be given. So, duly inspired from my behaviour change course and brimming with enthusiasm to delve into the literature to understand more about the target behaviour I hoped to change and effective behaviour-change techniques to do so, and to spend some quality time developing a behaviourally informed intervention… I was faced with ETHICS FORMS! Hmmm….not so inspiring, though of course a critical part of the process.

Thankfully, the HEE fellowship provides a perfect bridge to support the development phase of my work, allowing me to prepare detailed research protocols and all the associated documents that support an ethics application for my proposed research and to begin some of the training in research skills needed to carry out the research. As well as fulfilling the immediate requirement to secure my longer term PhD funding, the process of preparing ethics applications has forced me to consider the finer details of my research and really think through how I will deliver it. I’ve had great support from my supervisors and my department – including the opportunity to gather valuable statistics feedback from the regular department Stats Coven!

So, a slightly different focus for my first six months than I had planned, but it has so far been a fulfilling and interesting time, as well as suitably productive. I’ve attended a couple of other short courses, both of which have helped to keep my ‘inspiration and enthusiasm’ barometer high. I’ve attended various department seminars and workshops and had an opportunity to meet and network with other PhD students. Naturally, I’ve also learnt the ins and outs of the various ethics processes and undertaken some training in research integrity and good clinical practice!

So onward and upwards. I have submitted my ethics applications and I’m in the midst of the lengthy process of amendments and waiting… and waiting… Perhaps I will use some of this time to explore that behaviour change literature-base I’ve been waiting to get to. Maybe there are even the beginnings of a systematic review in sight…

My name’s Claire Beynon and I’m a registrar in my third year of training.

I went to the Faculty of Public Health (FPH) conference in Brighton last year (above) and I’m going to this year’s event in Telford in June. So I thought I’d offer some thoughts on the benefits to other registrars of coming along as well.

As a registrar working in Wales I know most of the people in my area really well, but I don’t have much of a chance to find out about what’s happening across other parts of the UK or meet other registrars.

The FPH conference brings registrars from across the UK together. Last year I met several other registrars from opposite ends of the country and we shared stories and experiences about the different health systems we now work in.

I also bumped into a few people who I hadn’t seen in a long time, and we caught up in the relaxed breaks and mealtimes over the course of the two days.

I was lucky enough to have my abstract accepted last year and I spoke in one of the parallel sessions on childhood obesity. I shared my work with people who, like me, are really dedicated to tackling childhood obesity. I found it was a great platform to share work you have finished recently and get some vital feedback and new ideas from other experts in the field.

The thing I liked most about last year’s conference was the atmosphere. As we all know, people working in public health are fabulous, so perhaps it isn’t a surprise that the conference was fun.

The FPH Specialty Registrars Committee (who represent registrars) also has a dedicated conference session at which registrars will be sharing their experiences of the National Treasure placements.

And there will be time to socialise too. This year committee members will all be at the conference party at the end of day one. It’s going to be a fantastic opportunity to get to know people informally who you will very likely end up working with over the rest of your career. So come along and say hello!

Disclaimer

The aim of this blog is to encourage discussion and debate on public health issues. The views expressed here are the personal views of authors, and the content does not reflect the official position of the Faculty of Public Health. However, discussion generated here may be used to influence the development of organisational policy.